Bring Back “The Dresden Files” Drum Stick Campaign

If all fans of “The Dresden Files,” which was cancelled by The SCI FI Channel are serious about wanting to get their show back with all new episodes, there might be something you can do.

Taking a page from the “Save Jericho” script, one of our Slice of SciFi fans by the name of John VanSeters took our cue about Mike’s suggestion of sending drum sticks to the network to the next level and got SCI FI President Bonnie Hammer’s snail-mail address. The drum stick is an appropriate message to send to Hammer since Harry Dresden uses one for his magician’s wand.

Fans are saying that SCI FI is mailing back their sticks saying they are undeliverable. This means they are getting the message because the 30 Rockefeller Plaza address is certainly a correct one. Don’t be discouraged by this callous reception. Here is also some calling information –

Now get those drum sticks going and don’t forget to print “SAVE DRESDEN” on each stick you send to Ms. Hammer or Mr. Stern.

NOTE: Don’t loose heart if your sticks are returned as undeliverable. SCI FI is not accepting them because of the lesson learned from the 20 tons of nuts sent to CBS. However, SCI FI does accept letters so, send in pictures of drumsticks and Harry Dresden with the message “Save The Dresden Files.”

IMDb says he’s only in 6 episodes, and we know that “Dresden Files” wouldn’t come back immediately.

Best bet would be to work with SciFi Channel, let them plan on bringing it back for Fall 2008 or Spring 2009, giving them enough chance to retool whatever they thought needed fixing, and get enough good scripts written, and have enough time to have the special effects processed without being rushed.

We’re asking for SFC to bring it back in a smart fashion, not rush it back now because we want more (nor to also say “we told you so” about Painkiller Jane).

I’m willing to wait, especially if it means having the series done right.

Ahhhhh, the massive mailing of objects is what clued them in to just how many fans out there were willing to watch the show and make an investment of their time and a few pennies to purchase the product (nuts or drum sticks), then mail it to them. It has a much greater impact than just emails (which they rarely read), snail-mail support letters or phone calls.

The nut campaign for Jericho worked because it represented a statement from fans — and the press picked up on it as well — as we hope this campaign will do.

Suits understand dollars yes, but they really do understand viewer pressure as well.

Dresden was just starting to get good when it was pulled. It deserves another shot and this is one concrete and relevant way fans can make it known to Hammer, et. al., that their product is worth reviving, re-tooling and re-airing.

Paramount didn’t accept the dollars raised by the “Save Enterprise” campaign, and they had a lot of dollars. I’m not sure NBC/Universal would react any different to a money-raising campaign for Dresden Files, either.

Hopefully DVD sales are steady enough to keep their attention on the possibility, but I don’t know how else to flash viewer dollars at them.

I never really watched Dresden Files, but if so many people like it SFC needs to bring it back & get rid of that awful Flash Gordon show. I would rather have Dresden on after Doctor Who. I don’t like having Flash on after Who–it might affect its’ ratings.

By the way, this doesn’t need to be expensive to do. If you’ve got a teenager around, chances are he or she knows somebody with some old drumsticks. Or visit a flea market or some yard sales this weekend. Make sure you tell people why you want the drumsticks. You never know when you’ll meet another fan!

Don’t forget to send a nice, polite letter along with the drumsticks. Insulting Sciffy won’t get Dresden back. You might want to thank them for cancelling Flash!

Hello and I think it’s a great idea. And the Dresden ‘community’ is actually kind of organized, we’re cooking up all kinds of good stuff at the forums at http://www.dresdencity.org. And I’m thrilled to see a huddle of fans I didn’t know about. We’ve been organizing to push DVD sales because we think strong sales are the single biggest argument for extending the life of the show. We’ve also got something like 3400 signatures on a petition, with comments, that got sent over — comment by comment, — to Lionsgate (the producers) this week. We hosted a successful raffle to raise some running money for postage, etc. And since SciFi’s been deleting comments left and right on the TDF forum, the conversation is continuing over at dresdencity. Hey, glad to hear about this and please consider joining us. It’s always worthwhile to stand up for better programming, good acting and good writing!

Me and dad sent them a whole box full. this is such a cool idea. way to go Sam!!! woot.
I saw someone in the forum say, “eh who cares”. dude!!!! HELLO! why you think we get junk like flash, pain killer jane and all those lame movies on saturdays??? You got to speak up and say, “um excuse me, but coulf you maybe get a clue?” I mean serious, if you don’t say nothing then you can’t complain when they feed you crap and call it good stuff.

>>>Too little, too late.
>>>The Dresden Ã¢â‚¬Å“communityÃ¢â‚¬Â is painfully disorganized and >>>so late to the game itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s pathetic.

Ah the unofficial FarPoint troll crawls out from under his bridge and as usual completely misses the point. The Dresden community is neither “painfully disorganized” nor is it “too late to the game”.

It’s NEVER too late to try a “bring back” campaign for any show one enjoys. Are the odds long? Yeah maybe, but it’s worked for other properties….Jerico, Serenity/Firefly, and the granddaddy of all fan campaigns….Star Trek.

I wasn’t saying send them money, btw. What I was saying was that networks care about selling advertising and knowing that their audience has cash to burn is what will impress advertisers. Rather than betting all of your hopes on mailing knick-knacks, if you could find out what advertisements ran during Dresden, you could start contacting those companies and telling SciFi about it. Even better would probably be spending your money with those companies and telling scifi about it.

hey guys,
where do we get the glow in the dark drumsticks at? or do they make pens that the ink glows in the dark? if so can someone PM me in the forum please. we are going have 20 more to send here, be cool if we could write on them in glow in the dark ink. hehe. be like ghost haunting the studio there. “WEEEEE WANT HARRRY BAAAAAACK!” hehe.

If execs at the Sci Fi channel were smart and daring, which I doubt, what they could do with The Dresden Files is make some Harry Dresden movies to fill two hour time slots.

Like Columbo back in the 1970’s, they would only make 6 to 9 TV movies a year but each one would be an event. The stories which were chosen would have the best writing. The special effects budget could be much more effectively spent in this format then spread out over 12 to 20 one hour episodes. More of the flavor of the original novels could be worked into the movies.

If this idea worked; both creatively and financially, the Sci Fi channel could sign other authors and adapt their material to the same format. They could garner a lot of favorable publicity, as well as good ratings, for doing something like this. From the fan’s perspective, imagine original movies on the Sci Fi channel that were actually worth watching.

I plan on sending a few letters…the drumsticks I’ll keep in mind if I can find em. I recently joined dresdencity.org (great bunch of folks there btw), and am eager to join the support for The Dresden Files in an effort for renewal.

Damn, Damn, Damn, we lost all the Digg nubmers when I changed this from an announcement to a regular post to make room for the SaveJourneyman Campaign. Damn, it had over 100 Diggs for this Dresden post….that’s what I get for changing the post date to keep this on the front page for another few days. Digg should have some way to keep track of that sort of thing when it happens so the Digg numbers aren’t lost….Damn, Damn, Damn!

I tend to agree with Sid and the DVD sales could really use help right now. They’re sitting at #644 at amazon.com and should really be a lot higher for such a recent release. Obviously, they weren’t marketed very much BUT that’s part of the renewal effort, too.

So, I know you guys are trying really hard, but the honest truth is that you’ll need to be a lot more active than this to get Dresden Files back. People offered to do so much to make Firefly continue on to season two, and that didn’t work. Find out the director’s opinion, ’cause if he/she doesn’t want to continue, it’s not going to happen. We true die hard Firefly fans learned that the hard way.

I’d love to see the Dresden Files back on TV, either as a show or as the “movies” that were suggested. A DVD compalation of whatever they do would be sweet (and yes, I do own books 1-9 and the DVD of season one). Hope we can get Scifi to reconsider ^_^

Hey guys, finely a good solid show and you got to give me Vampires? Dresden is finally a good guy who had no choice in who he was out fighting for the underdog. Here I am sitting wearing out my disc . If someone out there wants to bring back Dresden then we need the cooperation of “Amazon”. When I bought “Dexter season one, they offered me season two in advance. They didnâ€™t take my money until it was released, but that way “The Powers that Be” knew how many people were really interested enough to offer to pay in advance. Come on is stuff like this “site” for real or is it just fluff and pabulum to pacify the “Masses” until slowly good things, like Dresden, are for gotten.

no, no, no, I think they need to keep the charcters!!!!!!! the only reason i got into dresden files were because of the charcters. Especially the one who played dersden.if they put in a difernt charcter i wouldnt even want to watch because i love how he acts and he’s just perfect for that part! hope they bring it back!

just found this and i gotta say i’d love to see The Dresden Files brought back. Maybe we need to arrange to get noticed by producers and directors. They keep axing the ‘good’ tv shows, but keep the ‘not-so-good’ ones… we just need to show that the Dresden files was a much loved show and has a huge following that could mean making money -which is obviously all they care about.

Generally speaking, public attention is what will help bring the series back.

So what you should be looking to do, is to get every single person who you would have normally gotten to send a drumstick to do it all at once, or perhaps to send it all to once location, and then shipped in bulk in some sufficiently annoying or flamboyant package. Grand gestures, all at one time. Or a constant trickle of fairly easily ignorable content that someone can be paid a relatively small amount to filter out without annoying anyone that matters

Well it’s good they have a myspace page, but they are not using it properly to get the word out to get the show back on the air. There are only 153 friends, you can’t take that to SciFi and expect them to do anything.

I can’t believe SCI-FI cancelled such a great show.They should pull some of those crappy knockoffs they show on Saturdays and bring back Dresden ASAP.I just bought another DVD set because my cousin took mine when he cam to visit(Columbia House has them for $19.95).I have left several dozen comments on the SCI-FI page and if they continue to show the crappy programs they have been putting on then I will just cancel my subscription to the channel.

I stopped watching SciFi over The Dresden Files. It was the final straw for that network with me.

You see they killed Farscape and enraged millions of fans with the way they did it. It was so bad they had to do a miniseries just to appease fans. Then they did Battlestar Galactica, but only did 2 years worth of episodes and stretched the series for 4 years. That math didn’t work for me, how about you?! Dresden Files was a good show, yes. But you can’t get them to bring it back any sooner than you’ll see Farscape produced again. This is what you get with NBC owning Sci Fi. Instead they air Ghost Hunters which is NBC reality crap, and is cheaper to produce… The thing to do is stop watching SciFi so their ratings drop and they either get sold or get the message.

[…] you the listener to show your support for Mountain Dew Game Fuel, and much more importantly, The Dresden Files. Pick up some drumsticks, and mail them to the head of Sci-Fi. Tv execs, beware of geeks in large […]